1) What author do you own the most books by?Probably U.K. Le Guin?2) What book do you own the most copies of?I'm not aware of owning more than 2-3 copies of anything.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?"This is the type of arrant pedantry up with which I will not put." (Often attributed to Churchill, but the attribution is disputed. I DO like the arrant pedantry of correctly attributing quotations.)

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?Two of my fictional loves are Mr. Spock and Sherlock Holmes.

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?I'm not counting books I repeatedly demanded to be read to me when I was 2-3. When I was a kid, I re-read constantly. I loved Arthur C. Clarke and so possibly the book I've read the most times is Childhood's End or Dolphin Island. I stopped re-reading so often beginning in high school. I re-read Lord of the Rings every few years.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings were favorites around then.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?I'm not saying it's "the worst" of anything but I recently bounced off The Stars Like Dust by Asimov because of the sexism.

8) What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?I really liked Ubik by Philip K. Dick.

9) If you could force everyone you know to read one book, what would it be?I don't want to "force" anyone to read anything, and I certainly don't think there's one single book that suits everyone I know, from my 5 year old nephew to my mom with Alzheimers.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?No idea. That's not something I follow or use to get recommendations for what to read.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?Three Bags Full by Leonie Swann. It's a detective novel where the detectives are sheep.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?The Sandman graphic novels, because I dread how awful the movie could be.

21) Austen or Eliot?Austen, although I recently read Middlemarch and liked it a lot.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?I haven't read very many books by people of color.

[For the next questions, add "one of" before "your" and make the noun plural. I don't usually have single favorites.]

23) What is your favorite novel?Jane Eyre

24) Play?King Lear (I'm just putting something because I don't know very many plays.)

25) Poem?"Earthy Anecdote" by Wallace Stevens

26) Essay?Nothing specific is coming to mind.

27) Short story?"The Diary of the Rose," U.K. Le Guin, in The Compass Rose

28) Work of nonfiction?Uncommon Carriers by John McPhee. It's about various ways that stuff is transported from one place to another.

29) Who is your favorite writer?I usually answer U.K. Le Guin to this question.

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?I don't know, because I don't pay that much attention to who's on the bestseller lists or winning the awards, except for the science fiction and fantasy awards. There are writers who win a lot of SFF awards who don't do it for me. Robert J. Sawyer is one. But I wouldn't say he's "overrated" per se. (Have you noticed I don't particularly care for ratings and hierarchies?)

31) What is your desert island book?The OED

32) And… what are you reading right now?Big City Bad Blood by Sean ChercoverSwordspoint by Ellen Kushner

Comments

The O.E.D. is a good choice for the desert island. Not the compact version, the multi-volume one you find in the library. The most embarrassing gap in my reading is that even though I'm obsessed with L.A. history, I haven't read the classic noir fiction that everyone seems to love. I've always been a reader of non-fiction, and now that's all I read.